Issue

Vol. 14 (2022)

Humidity Sensing of Stretchable and Transparent Hydrogel Films for Wireless Respiration Monitoring

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40820-022-00934-1
Yuning Liang
State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies and the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China
Qiongling Ding
State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies and the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China
Hao Wang
State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies and the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China
Zixuan Wu
State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies and the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China
Jianye Li
State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies and the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China
Zhenyi Li
State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies and the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China
Kai Tao
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Micro and Nano Systems for Aerospace, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, People’s Republic of China
Xuchun Gui
State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies and the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China
Jin Wu
State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies and the Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Display Material and Technology, School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People’s Republic of China

Corresponding Author: Jin Wu

wujin8@mail.sysu.edu.cn

Nano-Micro Letters, Vol. 14 (2022), Article Number: 183

Abstract

Respiratory monitoring plays a pivotal role in health assessment and provides an important application prospect for flexible humidity sensors. However, traditional humidity sensors suffer from a trade-off between deformability, sensitivity, and transparency, and thus the development of high-performance, stretchable, and low-cost humidity sensors is urgently needed as wearable electronics. Here, ultrasensitive, highly deformable, and transparent humidity sensors are fabricated based on cost-effective polyacrylamide-based double network hydrogels. Concomitantly, a general method for preparing hydrogel films with controllable thickness is proposed to boost the sensitivity of hydrogel-based sensors due to the extensively increased specific surface area, which can be applied to different polymer networks and facilitate the development of flexible integrated electronics. In addition, sustainable tapioca rich in hydrophilic polar groups is introduced for the first time as a second cross-linked network, exhibiting excellent water adsorption capacity. Through the synergistic optimization of structure and composition, the obtained hydrogel film exhibits an ultrahigh sensitivity of 13,462.1%/%RH, which is unprecedented. Moreover, the hydrogel film-based sensor exhibits excellent repeatability and the ability to work normally under stretching with even enhanced sensitivity. As a proof of concept, we integrate the stretchable sensor with a specially designed wireless circuit and mask to fabricate a wireless respiratory interruption detection system with Bluetooth transmission, enabling real-time monitoring of human health status. This work provides a general strategy to construct high-performance, stretchable, and miniaturized hydrogel-based sensors as next-generation wearable devices for real-time monitoring of various physiological signals.


Highlights:


1 A general strategy of fabricating thickness-controllable hydrogel films with diverse polymer networks for humidity sensing is proposed. The hydrogel film humidity sensor displays an unprecedented sensitivity up to 13,462.1%/%RH.
2 The stretchable humidity sensor can work normally under large tensile strains with even enhanced sensitivity, which makes the humidity responding property of hydrogel mechanically programmable.
3 A wireless respiratory interruption detection mask with Bluetooth transmission function is developed based on the sensor, enabling the real-time, wireless and accurate acquisition of user's breathing state, such as the interval and breathing frequency and apnea.

Keywords

Stretchable and transparent humidity sensors Hydrogel film Wireless and wearable sensor Respiration monitoring Ultrasensitive
Liang, Yuning, Qiongling Ding, Hao Wang, Zixuan Wu, Jianye Li, Zhenyi Li, Kai Tao, Xuchun Gui, and Jin Wu. 2022. “Humidity Sensing of Stretchable and Transparent Hydrogel Films for Wireless Respiration Monitoring”. Nano-Micro Letters 14 (September):183. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40820-022-00934-1.
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